DOMAIN OF EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESIS 101 



the organism, not a chemical formula or a material, 

 rigid, mechanical system. 



No conceivable organization is by itself a sufficient 

 cause of the purposeful direction of all the constituents 

 of an organism and of its power, at first hand, for the 

 best benefit of the whole. So far as a structure is 

 observed in any way, it shows itself as the effect 

 of a function. The functions are the primary factors, 

 or rather the whole which utilizes material matter and 

 energies for the common benefit. 



What, furthermore, does the expression of the 

 ' chemist '- ( This particular material group of matter 

 is the foundation for the eye ' mean ? How can the 

 tendency to development which makes itself quite 

 evident in a fertilized egg be brought under a structural 

 formula ? What, for the chemist, is ' growth ' and evo- 

 lutional energy ? * Is a chemical formula imaginable 

 which can express ' inheritance ' ? * What formula 

 has conscience, and what structure and organization 

 can present it graphically ? All that, however, belongs 

 to ' life/ and should be explained. 



1 Reinke : Die Welt als Tat, p. 293. 



2 Bunge well expresses this (Lehrbuch d. Physiol. d. Menschen, II) : ' But 

 we can perfect the aids to investigation ! We can increase the powers 

 of the microscope ! The cell, which appears structureless to-day, will show a 

 structure to-morrow. . . . And the nucleus also is no longer structureless. 

 . . . But a complex structure is no explanation : it is a new enigma. 

 How has this complex structure originated ? Will it perfectly solve the 

 great enigma, the greatest of all the enigma of inheritance the 

 inheritance through a small cell ? ' 



